Why Film Sparked Protests & Violence In Middle East

Federal officials are investigating the maker of “Innocence for Muslims,” which sat unnoticed on YouTube for months.

The wave of indignation and rage over the film, which portrays the Prophet Mohammad as a womanizer and a fool.

The Libyan U.S. consulate attack was allegedly triggered by the discovery of an anti-Islamic film produced in the United States by someone linked to Morris Sadek, an Egyptian Copt resident in the United States. It was the film’s translation into Arabic and broadcast on Arab TV stations and talk shows that sparked the violence—although investigations are now under way in Washington to establish whether the worst of the violence was not spontaneous.

In Egypt, the religious TV channel al-Nas showed clips from the offending video, dubbed into Arabic, and scenes posted online have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

Egypt Independent, the English version of one of Egypt’s leading newspapers Al Masry al Youm, has reported that Sadek was banned from entering Egypt and had his citizenship revoked in May 2011 because he called for war against the country.